Head of Compliance & Risk

About the Role

The Head of Compliance & Risk is a newly created senior role responsible for building and embedding [Employer hidden]’s enterprise-wide risk and compliance capability.

Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, this role will play a critical part in helping the organisation move from an informal and reactive approach to risk and compliance toward a structured, proactive, and proportionate framework suited to a fast-growing global business.

The role will focus on building practical frameworks that enable the business to operate confidently and responsibly, without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy. You’ll work closely with leaders across the organisation to ensure compliance and risk management are embedded in day-to-day decision-making and support [Employer hidden]’s commercial ambitions.

A key early priority will be ensuring the organisation is well positioned to meet compliance requirements associated with US government contracting, supporting the business as it develops opportunities within this market.

For someone who enjoys building capability from the ground up and partnering closely with senior stakeholders, this role offers a rare opportunity to shape risk and compliance within a growing international organisation.

Key Responsibilities

You’ll establish and lead [Employer hidden]’s global risk and compliance capability, assessing regulatory obligations across the UK, US, and other key jurisdictions and building scalable frameworks that support growth while maintaining strong governance. Acting as the internal owner for US regulatory compliance, you’ll ensure the business is well positioned to pursue commercial and government opportunities by embedding compliance early in bids, contracts, and delivery.

You’ll design and implement the organisation’s enterprise risk management framework, maintaining the corporate risk register and leading risk assessments for strategic initiatives such as US expansion, government contracts, and new partnerships. Alongside this, you’ll oversee compliance monitoring and reporting, identify and close gaps, and provide clear risk insights to the CFO, Executive Leadership Team, and Board.

Working closely with teams across the business, you’ll embed compliance and risk thinking into everyday decision-making, support new initiatives and market entry, and ensure policies and processes remain active, understood, and effective. As the organisation’s subject matter expert for risk and compliance, you’ll also lead training, provide trusted guidance to stakeholders, and manage investigations or regulatory engagement where required.

Skills & Experience

You bring strong experience in risk, compliance, or governance roles, ideally within complex or international environments. Importantly, you’ve built or designed risk and compliance frameworks yourself, not simply maintained existing ones.

You’re comfortable working in hands-on roles within growing organisations, where introducing structure needs to be balanced with commercial pragmatism. A strong understanding of both UK and US regulatory environments will be important, particularly across areas such as data protection, ethics, anti-bribery, and contracting standards. Experience supporting US government contracting readiness or working within regulated US markets is also essential.

You’re confident engaging with senior stakeholders and able to communicate complex risk and compliance matters clearly at both executive and board level. Above all, you bring sound judgement, strong commercial awareness, and the ability to introduce the right level of structure without creating unnecessary complexity.

Company Benefits

• Hybrid working set-up (Minimum 3 days per week required in our office in Farringdon- London)
• Paid Leave- 35 days (inclusive of public holidays)
• Birthday Off
• Enhanced Parental Leave
• Life Insurance
• Critical Illness Cover
• Choice of Private Medical Insurance or Annual Health Check
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Pension
• Breakfast, Snacks, Friday lunch & Barista Coffee Machine in the office
• Learning Portal with over 100,000 assets available to support professional development